Robert Fitzpatrick, A Harold Camping Disciple, Talks May 21 Judgment Day and Rapture: Interview

Robert Fitzpatrick believes he has only a few more days to live, and he's okay with that. For the most part.

The events of Judgment Day will begin on May 21, 2011, just before 6 p.m, Fitzpatrick insists. On that day, a great earthquake will shake the earth to its core, and God's chosen few will be lifted up to heaven. He believes the Rapture will begin before the earthquake, but that the two events might only be a few moments apart.

Fitzpatrick is the author of The Doomsday Code which condenses the voluminous work of Harold Camping, president of Family Radio and the lead death-knell ringer of the human race (or at least the heathens). Although Fitzpatrick's self-funded shelter ad campaign directly supports Camping's message, you can't really say that I am affiliated with [Family Radio], he maintains. A devoted follower of Camping's prophetic teachings, Fitzpatrick wrote The Doomsday Code because he realized there was a need for one book that put it all together.

Camping insists that his Doomsday prediction is based on unambigious empirical evidence offered by The Bible. The process by which Camping originally identified May 21, 2011 as Judgment Day is in no way definite, Fitzpatrick said. But it is the subsequent proofs (discovered by Camping and his associates) that eventually convinced Fitzpatrick and thousands of fellow devotees. Fitzpatrick made some vague references to Bible verses and a Biblical timeline, but cited a specific equation as an important source of his confidence: The last entry in the Old Testament, which includes an image of Judgment Day, is dated 391 B.C. The number of years between 391 B.C. and 2011 A.D. is 2401- which is 7 x 7 x 7 x7.

In Fitzpatrick's mind, this is unshakable proof.

A believer in predestination, the former MTA worker and current Staten Island resident is only fairly confident he will be lifted up in the Rapture. There is nothing you can do on your own to be saved, he said. God chose us before the foundation of the world. But whatever one's percieved fate, the bottom line is that we're supposed to sound the warning, Fitzpatrick said.

Not all will heed it. Fitzpatrick's only family is his mother (who is in a nursing home, suffering from dementia) and a sister, who wants nothing to do with any of it.

While he is scared for her and for anyone who will have to go through Judgment Day, he believes that God will be merciful in other ways to those he does not save, such as granting someone a quick and painless death.

When asked how he will spend the remainder of his days on earth, Fitzpatrick said he had nothing special planned.